Wunderland(4)
He dangles the picture before her, the Book Lady and her kneeling lover inches from Renate’s eyes. She averts her gaze.
“It’s—it appears to be a postcard.” Her voice sounds strange to her: nasal and distant. Someone somewhere near the back windows titters.
“Yes, but what kind of postcard?”
“A blank one?”
Another ripple of laughter. “Well,” he says, “yes. But what I really want to know is to whom it belongs. And how it got here. Perhaps you can give me the answer.”
Renate swallows again, miserably. Because of course, of course she can.
She can give him the answer, and then her life will be over.
* * *
It had started the prior Friday: an afternoon that Renate, as on most afternoons, spent almost entirely with Ilse. Renate and Ilse: study partners during class, huddle-whisperers in hallways; giggle-riders on the U-Bahn together. At three they’d set out for Renate’s house on Bismarckstra?e as usual, elbows linked and gaits matched, ambling past Unter den Linden’s budding lime and chestnut trees, making their usual stops along the way: the perfume store, where they eyed gem-toned glass bottles and gleaming diffusers but didn’t enter (the French perfumer openly dislikes children). Then Gerstel’s Hat Store, with its felted berets and smart fedoras and the draped purple turban that Herr Gerstel (who does like children) let them try on. They lingered by the window of the travel office, arguing which country they will visit together first. Ilse wants to go somewhere hot and exotic: the Sahara, the Nile. Or maybe Indochine. Renate wants to go to New York or Hollywood, though lately, based on her reading, she’s become increasingly intrigued by the Orient as well—which is why on Friday they also paused in the open doorway of the Chinese tea shop to breathe in the dry, mossy scent. Ilse disliked it, but Renate found it transporting. Standing there with closed eyes, breathing in deeply, she could have been on a Peking or Shanghai street, instead of in the middle of Berlin’s unexotic-but-bustling Tiergarten district. She’d tried to picture it: the scurrying Chinamen, their docile wives tripping behind them on tiny little feet, until Ilse—who has no time for dream-induced delays—cried “Mach schon!” and pulled her away.
When they reached Schloss-Konditorei they pooled their change for a buttery piece of poppyseed cake, which Herr Schloss—a red-cheeked man who, once a year, transforms into a fairly convincing Sankt Nikolaus—dispensed with his usual distracted grin. Their remaining two Pfennige got dropped in the Winter Relief collection can of a pimpled youth in a khaki shirt and white knee socks. He wasn’t bad-looking, but his danke sch?n came out in a two-toned bleat that made him sound like a pubescent billy goat. The girls barely made it another block before falling on each other, shrieking with laughter and prompting looks of startled censure from adult pedestrians.
“It was your fault,” Ilse managed finally, when she’d regained her composure. “He was so beguiled by your beauty that his poor voice just dried up in his throat!”
“Me?” Renate wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. “He was staring at you! And thank goodness. I hate it when boys stare.”
“You wouldn’t hate it if you-know-who stared.”
“No,” Renate agreed. “I would not. But he won’t.”
“You never know.”
“Maybe not. But he won’t.”
Mirth exhausted, the two resumed their walk, at Potsdamer Platz passing another rattling can. This one was held by Fritz the war veteran, in his yellow badge with the three black dots that signal blindness. Sometimes Renate buys one of his wares; not because she actually needs pencils, but because she likes the seamed smile that appears on his face as her coins clink into his cup. It makes her feel benevolent. Also, comradely, since her father fought in the war too, as a Frontk?mpfer. And while he wasn’t blinded like Fritz, he came close enough to death that (in his own deep-toned, rumbling words) he spürte seinen Atem an meinem Nacken: felt its hot breath right on his neck.
On this particular Friday, however, they were all out of money, and so they passed by the old soldier without pausing, Ilse meticulously licking the last cake crumbs from her sticky fingers and Renate lost in thought about you-know-who. For a moment his face seemed to hang in the air before her, so close that she might have touched a high, perfect cheekbone. The mirage melted just in time for a snatched glimpse of a blond head, bobbing several meters before them.
“Guck mal da!” she gasped, gripping her friend’s elbow. “Look.”
“At what?”
“Up ahead. To the right.”
Ilse shaded her eyes with her hand. “Who am I looking for?”
“Who do you think?”
Ilse squinted, rising briefly onto tiptoe before shaking her head and falling back. “I don’t see him.”
“There,” said Renate. “He’s just passing the U-Bahn.” But her voice was more tentative now, her pointing finger less assured as she scanned the crowd, left to right, right to left. “He was just there. I swear.”
Ilse grinned. “Now you’re starting to see things. You should have your mother examine you.”
“Ach! Stop.” Her heart pounding, Renate cast one last glance down the broad greening avenue with its churning currents of late-day pedestrians. But the only face she recognized was the chiseled visage of Frederick the Great outside the Brandenburg Gate, bestowing his steely gaze on his fleshly descendants while riding his stone steed to nowhere.